Third class

We spent pretty much the whole class in a hands-on exercise setting up an XHTML page and a style sheet, using Notetab to view the two documents and Internet Explorer to preview. We covered Control-S to save as you go along, Refresh to preview your pages, and the test/preview/test cycle. I provided lots of real-life examples of things going wrong, which is exactly how things go with web development. When you get an unexpected result, add or change something to narrow down what the problem is.

At the end we briefly looked at web site statistics and their uses: seeing how your users are finding your site, what browsers and operating systems they are using, which pages they visit, how long they stay, etc. It's addictive!

There was one handout, a different overview of XHTML tags, which can be found here.

Second class: lecture presentation and handouts

Scribd links to the PowerPoint lecture, and the XHTML/box model handout. The CSS trifold is from RefCards.com, a very useful site.

Useful links for the second class

Try CSS quickly & easily with W3 Schools' TryIt (click an example on the page)

Good CSS resources: SitePoint, W3 Schools

Impressive demonstration of the power and beauty of CSS: csszengarden.com

Font sizes in CSS reference

Choosing colors: ColorSchemer, ColorSpot, W3School's background tester

Free XTHML templates: Open Source Web Design, Nuvio, Styleshout

Valid Document Type Declarations from THE site: http://www.w3.org/

Useful programs

FTP clients:

• SmartFTP (recommended)
• FileZilla

HTML editor:

• KompoZer

Text editors:

• jEdit
• Notetab Light

First class

The PowerPoint from the first class is here, and the Brief XHTML handout can be found here (or in PDF format).